Description
Book SynopsisJenni Fagan was born in Scotland. Jenni was selected as one of
Granta's Best Young British Novelists after the publication of her debut novel,
The Panopticon, which was shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the James Tait Black Prize.
The Sunlight Pilgrims, her second novel, was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award and the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award and saw her win Scottish Author of the Year at the Herald Culture Awards.
Luckenbooth was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2021. Jenni Fagan is a Doctor of Philosophy, she lives in Edinburgh with her son.
Trade ReviewOne of the most stunning literary experiences I've had in years. LUCKENBOOTH, sprawling the decades with its themes of repression and revenge, brings back something that has long been lacking in the British novel: ambition. If Alasdair Gray's Lanark was a masterly imagining of Glasgow, then this is the quintessential novel of Edinburgh at its darkest. -- Irvine Welsh
It's extraordinary. Make sure it's on your radar ... Definitely going to be one of my books of 2021, a gloriously transgressive novel of Edinburgh denizens past and present. -- Ian Rankin
Over time, 10 Luckenbooth Close sinks from grand residence to condemned squat with secrets seething in its walls ...
Luckenbooth is a place of compacted time, where the past manifests as unquiet ghosts and the future bleeds into the present ...
There's a force in Luckenbooth's bizarre assemblage. * The Times *
With
Luckenbooth, [Jenni Fagan] gives us
nine of Edinburgh's wildest and loneliest misfits ...
Piles on claustrophobia and menace ... As we move between the characters' perspectives, gritty realism takes over from the gothic. This isn't fancy Edinburgh: at No 10 it's cigarettes, cocaine and Benzedrine for breakfast ... There are
memorable creations ...
Fagan's prose is poetic, high-octane, built on punchy sentences. Arresting descriptions of the city and its weather abound. This is not a novel that lacks energy. * Sunday Times *
Jenni Fagan's
Luckenbooth reminded me of one of my favourite novels, Georges Perec's Life: A User's Manual. Set in an Edinburgh tenement,
it leaps across decades to tell the story of the curse that haunts No 10 Luckenbooth Close and its eccentric inhabitants. -- Alex Preston * Observer *
